'A impotência da natureza': necessidade e contingência lógica, natural e espiritual

Resumo

In this paper I will address the Hegelian approach to the so-called modal categories in the Science of Logic bearing in mind the centrality of the natural and spiritual status of contingency vis-à-vis the logical. I will argue, first, that the absolute necessity presented in the Logic must be read in the light of a clash between the ancient and modern conceptions of necessity and, therefore, in view of its spiritual status. The identity between contingency and absolute necessity becomes the fundamental aspect of the speculative and modern understanding of modalities. Second, I will show in what sense contingency is constitutive not only of the logical category of necessity, but that it has its own terrain in nature and spirit as well. Through the notion of the impotence of nature, Hegel emphasizes that the forms of empirical nature are not entirely reducible to the unity of the concept, and that contingency therefore has a constitutive role in the determination of natural objects themselves. Third, however, I will argue that this natural contingency irreducible to the concept does not have an irrational status in the form of a radical chance as an external limit to logic, but that the very facticity of nature is already found in the logical figures of contingency.